I said that the adventure began in San Fran,, but the second I arrived in Australia I became so much more excited and was overcome with the feeling that this is the real adventure - I’m international and for the next few months will be in places vastly different than anything I’ve experienced before. It’s been amazing. I’m in Brisbane – it’s beautiful and sunny and Eva’s been a wonderful host. She lives in what’s called a Queenslander – classic house in this area (aka Queensland). It’s airy and sunny with a great deck that when I hang out there it feels like I could be at a beach resort or something along those lines. While recovering from my jetlag on Friday (arrived late on Thursday) I was just in heaven to be able to do it at the place that’s my home for this trip and have it be so beautiful and breezy.
My first weekend here we went to Byron Bay. Via looking around for acro and yoga that was going on I’d seen this one-day yoga festival in Byron Bay called Evolve on Saturday and we decided to go. It was a nice festival and a great thing for us to experience together as it’s something we’re both interested in. We got hooked up too, we volunteered for our tickets and our task was just to put those yoga festival-ish pretty tattoos on folks for a couple of hours! Had a wonderful time...but once we went to the beach afterwards I was almost regretting having gone to a yoga festival at a school ground instead of spending all day swimming and enjoying what must be one of the most exceptional views in the world. Apparently it is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and a place where many people go to learn to surf. Soft, white sand and clear, blue water with rocky cliffs and outcroppings into the water. Eva’s a big diver, certainly one reason she loves living in this region of the world so on Sunday morning we got up and went snorkeling. We weren’t sure exactly where to go so just swam out from the beach and wandered for 45 minutes or so with only seeing one brownish little fish. Then we saw two little jellies which thrilled me…and then it was just a matter of moments before we came upon an amazing coral reef with hours of fishies and things to explore. Saw the biggest schools of fish I’ve ever seen before, rainbow fish and many others. When either Eva or I saw something exceptionally exciting we’d shout under water as a queue to the other. It was mostly me doing that and calling her over to tell me what it was. One time when I did this and showed under the water, “look at this big fish down on the bottom” and waved my hand back and forth to show it she got me to come up and she said, “ OK, don’t panic, it’s totally fine, but that’s a shark!” Called a wobbegong shark – it’s native to Australia and not aggressive so that was quite cool. (Just googled it though and online it says that it can be quite dangerous when provoked...) Also saw an eel. We heard that there was a baby turtle in the area too but didn’t see it unfortunately. That would have been extra special. Unfortunately because of the nature of swimming I didn't bring my camera. P.S. for all those hours in the blazing hot Australian sun, I only got a tid bit burnt that day…
Now, something that I haven’t mentioned while I’ve been saying how beautiful and sunny it’s been is that it’s also unbelievably hot…and there’s very little A/C here (except for in stores and whatnot). It’s hot all day, and stays hot all night. The other night was actually the hottest night on record in the past 10 years – it didn’t go below 97 degrees fahrenheit I think. I arrived just in time for 5 ish really really hot days, much hotter than usual (great!) Since these folks live here I’d say it’s surprising I’ve been handling it so well – I think I didn’t realize that it has been exceptionally hot so I just stepped up to the challenge. |
Eva loved acro so much that she wanted her friend to experience it too, so we flew a lot!
During the week Eva worked so I found other things to do during the day. Via the amazing tool that is facebook I managed to meet up with some acroyogis, two of whom were AcroYoga Montreal trained and one trained with the San Fran crew – one lady one day and then two other women twice later. I had such a blast sharing and learning. It was also special that a few of Eva’s friends who I’d taught a bit of acro to were really excited to get into it and one of those women who I especially enjoyed is teaching a series coming up so I was happy to connect them to her and recommend her highly. During a couple of other days I toured the city of Brisbane and enjoyed the free museums - I went to the Queensland Natural History museum and learned about what's in the oceans and what used to be there, and went to two art museums. One of which had some aboriginal art which has lots of dots - for those of you in Floyd, Starr Root's artwork looked a lot like th Australian aboriginal art (below)!
Another adventure I went on during a weekday was to Stradbroke Island. Probably the best one day, solo adventure ever.A little island off of Queensland that was accessible by public transit thankfully but took about three hours and 4 different means of transportation to get to. When I arrived to the main beach it was closed due to unsafe conditions so I waded out into the water just a little to cool off and then realized the amazing tranquility of having no one else around. I pulled out my yoga mat and had a really special little yoga session right in front of the water. Later did a walk that is on boardwalks out over the rocks and exploring the area – amazing view points and ways to see animals in the water. I enjoyed crawling out on the rocks to find little spots to sit and watch. I saw turtles, manta rays (they moved so beautifully in the water), a school of fish jumping, and last but not least a dolphin and her baby came relatively close and I couldn’t believe getting to see them like that. What a day! Apparently it was also mating season for leopard sharks and they were around but I probably would have needed to get closer to see them since they don't hang out at the surface.
My last weekend in Australia was Australia Day weekend (like 4th of July, everyone has Monday off), folks call it Straya Day. Eva put together a great camping trip with a crew of her close friends out to Toowoomba. We had a great group of campsites and ate amazingly for each meal, swam during the day and at night, introduced everyone to acro and even did a little class for folks our last morning there, played games, had bonfires, played music, and introduced a bunch of the Australians to s’mores. One of Eva's dear friends is a lady named Bec and she has a 7 year old daughter, Sophia. Sophia was our token child on the trip, and she was a really special part of it - she's loving, fun, smart, chatty, and she was absolutely crazy about acro. We had a blast playing together and I woke up to the sweet note below one morning.
And then to top it all off we stopped to see wild kangas on our way home because I hadn’t seen them yet. We were exhausted by the time we got back and then I packed up and got to the airport for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
And then to top it all off we stopped to see wild kangas on our way home because I hadn’t seen them yet. We were exhausted by the time we got back and then I packed up and got to the airport for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A fun thing about Australians – they abbreviate everything. Stradbroke Island is Straddie, tradesmen are traddies, sunglasses are sunnies, when guys wear short shorts the shorts are called stubbies, etc. Oh, and the lattes! They’re so good. Apparently Australians think that American coffee is crap – and in comparison it really is. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just really good. And, there was so much solar in Brisbane. Just all over, a good percentage of homes have either solar hot water or photovoltaic (solar electric) panels. They are all small systems though - most that I saw were even smaller than the smallest system we do in VT.